In this article we want to discuss the advantages and disadvantages we have found when using online interviews with children and teenagers.

* What ethical and methodological issues are specific to online interviews?

* How can the method be developed further?

It is based on experiences from three different research projects in which children at different ages were interviewed online, and it discusses some ethical and meth-odological problems concerning this method. No web cameras were used, which had the effect that no eye-to-eye contact was possible between the interviewer and the interviewee.

Six critical themes have emerged in our discussions of online interviews; Bridging the Distance, Written Conversations, Interpretation Difficulties, Identity, the Ethics of Online Interviewing and Practical Issues.

We have found that online interviews can be very useful as they simplify the in-terview situation in many ways.

4. Dunkels, Elza

et al.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Introduction. The aim of this article is to look at how attitudes towards the Internet technology differ between boys and girls, and how this affects their critical approach when seeking information.Method. The approach is ethnographic, and the material was collected by means of observations, conversations, questionnaires, interviews, computer logs and reading documents.Analyses. The analyses were made with the help of software for qualitative analysis, where all sentences both from interviews and field notes were coded. Some analyses were strictly quantitative and compared data from coded qualitative material with questionnaires and computer logs in a database sheet. Others were of qualitative nature and based on selected material from the coded texts.Results. It cannot be seen that boys and girls have different interests in the Internet technology in practice. But boys talk about their knowledge to a greater extent, and this interplays with their reflections about the Internet's reliability.Conclusion. Since a more developed cognitive model of the Internet seems to lead to more developed critical thinking about information on the Internet, it is important to help especially girls to develop models of the Internet, otherwise there is a risk that traditional gender roles will be preserved.

This article reports on part of a research project about children's searches for information on the Internet. The focus of the study is what children consider to be good web pages, combined with their ability to reflect upon the reliability of the Internet. The study is a case study of a group of fourth grade children searching for information, mainly at school. However, in interviews and conversation with the children, information-seeking both at school and at home was discussed. In this class, the teacher had a clear aim to start teaching from the children's questions and to discuss the reasonableness in the answers the students found.Children age 9 - 11 have the potential to reflect upon the reliability in web pages and they do actually do this. The teaching methods in this case study probably contribute to the development of a greater awareness about lies on the Web. It is important not only to have time to search, but also to discuss the results. If we want our children to be effective information handlers, there is no point in postponing the start of this development.

9.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

This article will show how children (9-12 years old) describe the Internet in terms of different models. It is related to how they understand the reliability of the Internet as well as some other aspects.The study was carried out in a 4th-grade class in 1998/1999. The study has an ethnographic approach. With inspiration from information research on human-computer-interaction, the childrens descriptions are categorized as different models: the surrogate model, the metaphor model, and network representation. The children, who describe the Internet as a network representation, know a lot about how the Internet works and they also talk in terms of reliability. It appears that some knowledge about the system facilitate this reasoning, but it does not appear that their knowledge has to be very great. However, children with very little knowledge seem to have greater difficulties to see through the system

10.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

In all interview situations there is a power imbalance in that the interviewer sets the agenda and takes control. When interviewing children the power imbalance between adult and child also has to be taken into consideration. The atmosphere and setting are important factors for the outcome of the interviews; the amount of data as well as the validity. This paper is based on experiences from two different research projects in which both online and face-to-face (f2f) interviews were used, and it discusses what different media can mean to the respondents.

The interviewees were between 11 and 16 years old. The analyses were made from transcripts of 11 online interviews and 13 face-to-face interviews. The flow of the dialogue and the amount of words used has been analysed.

There was a difference in how much the interviewees expressed themselves. Overall, the answers were longer in f2f interviews, but in f2f interviews the boys had the longest answers, and in the online interviews the girls wrote the longest answers. A difference in the intensity of questions from the researcher could be noted.

Could it be that boys generally are more used to spoken language and feel more comfortable in an interview situation where they can express themselves orally? Could it be that girls are more used to being quiet and have adopted the possibility to express themselves in written text? Can we find ways of exploiting this?

17.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

This is an educational case study trying to show what children (ages 10-12) think about searching for information on the Internet. In the guidelines for primary (and secondary) school it is said among other things that the students should learn how to evaluate facts from different sources. Since Internet came into our schools this has been the subject of many discussions. To what extent are these young children able to search for information on the Internet? Some teachers don't let the children even try and others think that Internet is a fantastic tool to use in training the students to evaluate facts.There have been observations, interviews, less formal talks and analysis of children's written work in three different schools/classes. These schools/classes were chosen because it was known that the teachers let the students use the Internet for information searches of their choice (within reason). All the students used AltaVista, MegaCrawler and similar search engines.The findings are that the children appreciate that Internet is a fast way to find current information and they all want to find "good" information. What "good" is differ from student to student. It can be anything from short texts (in Swedish) to "non-commercials", but they all had the ambition to do a good job and not just take the first hit available. They were also aware of the fact that there could be "lies" on the Internet. If the children are to succeed with this type of work they have to have the opportunity to practice

This article describes how working with Internet seeking in search engines like Google can affect young students motivation learning to read. The data on which this paper is based, was collected during 2002 in a Swedish setting with 52 students, 6 to10 years. The Internet seeking was integrated in all teaching, though the time spent by the computer for each child was relatively short.

The approach was ethnographic including various data collection methods such as ob-servations, interviews, chats, examining written documents, and a reading comprehension test. The data was analysed within a socio-cultural perspective, which claims that knowledge is constructed and developed through communication with the environment in a wide sense.

It was obvious that the children became interested in reading when they saw the older ones working with the Internet, finding interesting information they shared with younger classmates. The results of the reading comprehension test, which was conducted every year, showed that all grade 1 students had reached a reading level corresponding to the average of grade 2. Before the start of the project this had never happened.

Further research might confirm if working with Internet searches can be used as a method to motivate children learning to read.

This thesis focuses on what the Internet can contribute to schoolwork, what search strategies the students use, and how they express their understanding of this. There were questions con-cerningthe differences between searching at school and searching at home. Reliability and critical scrutiny have been related to the students' models of the Internet system.The approach is ethnographic within a socio-cultural framework which has its roots in both Dewey's and Vygotsky's theories. The material was collected during a period of a school year by means of observations, conversations, questionnaires, interviews (both with the students and with the teacher) and reading documents. The aim throughout was to answer the research questions by finding out the students' perspective on the use of the Internet.The results show that according to the students the Internet is a place where the main activity is searching as such. The big difference between searching at school and at home is that you are often more interested in what you search for at home. Interest makes it more fun and it is easier to understand what you are doing. The students think hypertext has a logical structure which is easy to use. They say that they need practical knowledge when searching but also tools like interest, goal, knowledge about the source, and knowledge about what you are searching for. These tools help you to make meaning, which is important in the process of producing instead of just reproducing knowledge. The teacher tried to start out from the students' point of view in her teaching; she discussed things with them a lot and tried to focus their attention on scrutiny and reliability.The students have a clear picture of the Internet as connected computers all over the world. Their descriptions can be categorized as examples of three different models: Surrogate,Metaphor or Network, where the network model is often connected with greater reflection on the system. In my material the reasons the students gave for choosing good web pages and not choosing bad web pages were divided into three categories and related to their models of the Internet and how they talk about the reliability of the Internet. In the class there is interplay between these three aspects. The overlap is not total, however, which suggests possibilities for new learning and development in closely related areas rather than an underlying general talent.As regards gender, my conclusion is that boys verbalize more knowledge about the technology. This is well in line with earlier research, which shows that boys have a greater interest in technology than girls have. This, however, may be due to the expectations of the world around them rather than to a genuine interest, since there is no support in the data for boys using the computer differently.

30.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

This paper is part of a larger project where the overall aim is to understand the importance of communication in the Internet community LunarStorm on the social life of Swedish tweens. The aim of this specific paper is to describe the design of the presentation pages and to discuss what this means in this context. The presentation pages were analyzed out from the appearance regarding choice of colors, length, use of symbols and photos, but also from different types of written messages. Initially the role of the presentation page in this group seemed to be a way to present oneself, but has changed towards a more anonymous first page. There may be several rea-sons for this, for example being cautious about exposing oneself to unknown people, but also that places like LunarStorm for this age group increasingly has become a place where you meet the friends you already know from school

This paper compares outcomes of student teachers’ use of oral classroom and written online forum discussions of course literature, with the aim of examining how each mode facilitates reflective practice. Data were collected from a class of 11 participating student teachers. Oral discussions were video-recorded and written online discussions were saved as Word files. Clinchy’s levels of knowing were used to determine the depth of the reflections and qualitative analyses inspired by Harasim were carried out as a complement. Findings indicate that on a group level the performance according to the levels of reflective thinking was the same. Both modes have advantages and drawbacks, but it is clear that there should be a variety of modes to provide individual student teachers with better possibilities of developing their reflections. Further explorations of the interaction between modal preference and modal performance, as well as the implications for online peer collaboration, are discussed.

The article discusses how preconceptions can work as barriers when studying childrens Inter- net searches. In the Swedish school culture children are often seen as incomplete beings who should be formed to eventually fit into an adult norm. A challenge to this view is to look at children as complete beings who have not yet had the possibility to learn a lot of things.Doing an ethnographic study is a way to find out how children themselves look upon their abilities regarding searches for information on the Internet. Their own view in this case was that their shortcomings were due to lack of opportunities to learn rather than lack of ability.It could be seen in the study that when the children were given possibilities to learn about In- ternet searching, they developed skills that have not been observed in other studies on children, e.g. reasoning about the reliability of different sources

35.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Introduction. Quantitative studies measuring skills related to the Internet are mainly based on self- reports. The aim of this paper is to study how Swedish teenagers, in their last year of compulsory school, carry out different information searching tasks on the Internet, by using a performance test. The test measures teenagers’ searches for information on the Internet from different points of view, such as medium-related and content-related aspects as well as operational and strategic aspects.Methods. The test was performed on the Internet in an open environment, without predefined solutions. During the test, some screens were recorded to obtain information about aspects not covered by the given test answers.Analysis. The test outcome was analysed in relation to curriculum goals, which correspond to the European framework DigComp2.1.Results. Reading long texts to find information was the easiest part but many failed to solve assignments because they did not master the digital environment.Conclusion. The result differed in the participating classes, which points to the importance of covering all aspects of the area when teaching, not forgetting the holistic approach.

38.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Introduction.The aim of this article is to determine the various skills necessary for seeking information on the Internet in educational settings. Throughout the article there is also an aim to present the students' perspective on possibilities and difficulties when using the Internet.Methods.The approach is ethnographic, which requires various data collection methods. In total 110 students in four different settings have participated.Analyses.The analyses were partly made with the help of the software NUD*IST for qualitative analyses, where sentences both from interviews and field notes were coded. Some analyses were of qualitative nature and based on selected material from the coded texts. Others were strictly quantitative and compared data from coded qualitative material with questionnaires and computer logs in a database sheet. In ethnographic analyses the material is read several times and compared in different ways to see what themes will emerge. In this case the respondents have also commented upon the result.Result.The students regard six different skills as fundamental: language, knowledge about the technology, knowledge about different ways of information seeking, how search engines work, setting goals and being critical

39.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

The aim of this article is to discern the various skills necessary for seeking, finding and scrutinizing information in educational settings. Throughout the article there is also an aim to present the students perspective on possibilities and difficulties when using the Internet.

The approach is ethnographic, which requires various data collection methods. In total 110 students and 19 teachers in five different settings have participated.

The students regard six different skills as fundamental: language, knowledge about the technology, knowledge about different ways of information seeking, how search engines work, setting goals, and being critical.

40.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Today digital communication is a natural part of young peoples social life. It has increased drastically during the last few years, and there are still a lot of questions about what this means, and how this new media affects communication. This study focuses on young people of 11-13, i.e.the age between children and teenagers, also called tweens. In a large study, the overall aim is to see what communication in the Internet community LunarStorm means to them in their social life. This particular paper reports on the content of the asynchronous communication in the participants digital guest books, which is one of the main channels for communication between the participants. A group of 15 tweens from a small village in Sweden were studied when communicating in Swedens largest Internet community, LunarStorm. The research method used was what is usually described as cyber ethnography. The contributions in the participants digital guest books are not written by the guest book owners themselves, which means that the focus is on the collective aspects of this communication, and not from a specific childrens point of view. Qualitative analyses were made of the content of 947 contributions in the participants guest books in order to make a statistical analysis. Most of the participants communication was between friends in the same geographical neighbourhood concerning how things are going, what to do, when to meet and similar things. The contributions were divided into three categories: (1) Social chat (2) Chain letters, and (3) Messages incomprehensible to outsiders. The information-category was divided into three sub-categories depending on the emotions expressed. 44% of the total messages were considered as emotionally neutral information, 39% as kind or encouraging, and also with an aim to sort things out, and 6% of the total messages contained insults and elements of anger.Among the younger users of the Internet community LunarStorm, the main reason to participate seems to be to keep in touch with already known friends. Being part of an already existing group continues and develops online. The positive tone among the participants in the community and the possibility to express difficult feelings, which have been reported on earlier from LunarStorm, still seem to be present.

This paper is based on experiences from three different research projects in which both face-to-face (f2f) and synchronous online (IM) interviews were used, and it discusses what different media can mean to different respondents. The interviewees were between 10 and 16 years old. The analyses were made from transcripts of 25 f2f interviews and 23 IM interviews. The flow of the dialogue and the amount of words used has been analysed. The answers were longer in f2f interviews, but in f2f interviews the boys had the longest answers, and in the IM interviews the girls wrote the longest answers.

Many studies on childrens and teenagers chat behavior report on the users tendency to present lies on the Internet. Already the pioneering work of Turkle shows that this behavior can contribute to a persons identity development in that sense that it is possible to test different ways of presenting yourself.

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews with 12 young teenag-ers which shows that the kind of net communities where young people gather their friends and communicate in more ways than just chatting allows the user also to present truths which are too embarrassing to present face-to-face.

46.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

et al.

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Although it is mandatory for student teachers in Sweden to show an ability to use ICT in pedagogical activities to obtain a teacher's degree, this ability is not always assessed in courses. Student teachers themselves claim that they are not enough prepared, not only in Sweden. Assessment in teacher training has two sides, the students will be assessed themselves, but they will also learn how to assess others. When ICT is involved there are further two sides; the student teachers ability to use ICT will be assessed and ICT can be used for assessment. When discussing teacher training, ICT and assessment there are several perspectives to take into account. This paper presents a review of research within the area, but it also takes a step further and looks at how ICT is used in combination with assessment in other parts of higher education to discuss how teacher education can be developed in this respect.

47.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

et al.

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

The Internet is increasingly being used by educators and educational institutions not only for information seeking, but also for communication and publishing students work. This paper explores how this can affect the learning situation and how we can understand the difference between an assignment carried out by a student and which is handed over directly, and only, to the teacher, compared to something that will be published and public on the net.

The Learning Design Sequence developed by Selander (2008) has been used as an analytical tool when analyzing 5 examples from schools using web 2.0. Not having the teacher as the only addressee for a school assignment changes the value of the work and opens up for further development of knowledge, and we argue that the Selander model in some cases can be extended, when the classroom goes on line.

48.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

et al.

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Forsling, Karin

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

An important element in the professional development of student teachers in most European countries is their progression towards becoming reflective practitioners - reflecting on and in practice (Schön, 1987) - and this can be evidenced in both oral and written forms of assessment. These two evaluative processes - oral feedback (for example in seminars) and written reflections (for example in reflective journals or assignments) are seen as different modes; some students who do not perform well in writing might be better in oral discussions, and vice-versa. A key difference in terms of how these two modes are performed is that while oral discussion is generally interactional, written assignments are typically completed in solitude. Thus students who prefer written mode do not get the same feedback as in a discussion, while those who prefer discussion may struggle with the lone nature of the written form. In this paper we compare outcomes of student teachers use of both oral classroom and written online-forum discussions for reflections on course literature, with the aim of examining each mode in facilitating reflective practice. Initial findings indicate that both modes have benefits and drawbacks. Further analysis which explores the interaction between modal preference and modal presentation, and the implications for online peer-collaboration, are discussed

49.

Enochsson, Ann-Britt

et al.

Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, Department of Education.

Jernfält, Margareta

Sundberg-Wincent, Marija

Janson, Staffan

Karlstad University, Faculty of Social and Life Sciences, Department of Health and Environmental Sciences.